Niagara County Court Judge Matthew Murphy said he 'agonized' over Christopher Belter's sentencing before deciding prison time would be 'inappropriate.'
Murphy also told Belter that the probationary sentence would be"a sword hanging over your head for the next eight years."
Steven Cohen, an attorney for one of the victims, told reporters that"justice was not done today." He later told"If Chris Belter was not a white defendant from a rich and influential family, in my experience... he would surely have been sentenced to prison," Cohen told the newspaper. Belter was initially charges with offenses that included first-degree rape, but he pleaded guilty in 2019 to lesser charges of third-degree rape and attempted first-degree sexual abuse. According to, Judge Sara Sheldon, who has since retired, placed him on two years' interim probation to give him a chance to earn youthful offender status, which would have limited his maximum prison time and prevented him from having to register as a sex offender.
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